Google Piles Pressure On Congress With Latest Transparency Report

Government requests for user data are still rising, says Google - up 19 percent in the US from six months ago and 250 percent since the company started publishing the figures in 2009.

Worldwide, its new Transparency Report reveals, the company dealt with 32,000 requests over the last six months, an increase of 15 percent over the previous six months and 150 percent more than in 2009. These requests related to around 48,000 accounts. Several new countries have got in on the act: Albania, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Indonesia, Kosovo, Luxembourg, Maldives Namibia and Nepal have all asked for data for the first time.

"This increase in government demands comes against a backdrop of ongoing revelations about government surveillance programs. Despite these revelations, we have seen some countries expand their surveillance authorities in an attempt to reach service providers outside their borders. Others are considering similar measures," writes Google legal director Richard Salgado in a blog post.

"The efforts of the US Department of Justice and other countries to improve diplomatic cooperation will help reduce the perceived need for these laws, but much more remains to be done."

The US government is still the world's most enthusiastic snooper on its citizens, accounting for 40 percent of all requests. And even this isn't the full story. The figures cover subpoenas, search warrants and court orders, but don't include requests made via National Security Letters (NSLs) or under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which have formed the basis of the US surveillance programs leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

While Google is now able to report some of these figures in terms of ranges, there's a delay built in to allow investigations to be completed in secrecy, so that we don't have the numbers for the latest six month period. Nor, naturally, do we have any information on the data that may be being slurped up by other means, such as the NSA's rumored tapping activities.

Google is, though, being as tough as it can about refusing data requests where they're unwarranted. Worldwide, it complied at least in part with 65 percent of requests, more or less the same as in the same period last year.

But there's huge variation. Finland, for example, appears to be particularly reasonable in its demands, with Google acceding to 94 percent of requests. For the US, the figure was 84 percent, with Lithuania and the Netherlands about the same and the UK 72 percent.

At the other end of the scale, many countries saw all their requests refused altogether - all 224 of Turkey's for example - and only three percent of Taiwan's 548 were granted.

As Salgado has noted, some countries are attempting to expand their legal powers to allow them to collect more data from foreign service providers. In the US, Google is desperate to limit the existing laws and provide independent oversight.

Salgado calls for Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, to make it clear that the government must obtain a search warrant before it can compel a service provider to disclose the content of a user’s communication. He also wants enactment of the USA Freedom Act, which, he says, "would prevent the bulk collection of internet metadata under various legal authorities, allow us to be more transparent about the volume, scope and type of national security demands that we receive, and would create stronger oversight and accountability mechanisms".

And, when you come down to it, this is the point of Google's transparency reports - along with those of many other organizations. Independent oversight would let Google off the hook. As Google is the first to admit, there's virtually no information in the reports that can be relied on to draw meaningful conclusions: no details on the reasons for the requests or for their denial. Nor, of course, is there any word on the far greater amount of NSA snooping in which it's desperate not to appear complicit. Frankly, the report's not much use.

As Salgado says, "Congress has a chance to pass historic legislation that will help restore trust that has been lost." That's trust in Google, as well as in government; and this report is, first and foremost, a lobbying tool.

I've been writing about technology for most of my adult life, focusing mainly on legal and regulatory issues. I write for a wide range of publications: credits include the Times, Daily Telegraph and Financial Times newspapers, as well as BBC radio and numerous technology tit...